1000Words - The CD

A picture speaks a thousand words, they say. This is a project for me to write a thousand words about one, about anything really. Here's the first.

The CD

Word count:1000

Note: Inspired by Swinging Popsicle’s Transit.

Her favorite CD was from an obscure indie group consisting of three Japanese and an American. She bought it at an anime convention few years back, when dressing up as another character was still a part of her life, and it had accompanied her throughout the good years and the tough ones. There were twelve songs in the album: eleven were sung in Japanese and one in a crooked, yet recognizable English. She had those eleven translated and romanized so she could sing along.

(years later she would misplace the piece of paper and thus lost the meanings of the lyrics forever)

Her favorite of all twelve was the second track. It told of a day in snow, of a sky forever and always pouring white flurry, of simple how are you’s, and an invitation to dance amidst all. She would play it three, four, a dozen times until things got easier, better; until her hostaged emotions finally found control, until she could accept people were careless and all rough edges. She listened until she found the courage to love again as commanded by the Bible, to offer the other cheek despite having no more unbruised space.

The songs were lullabies. When one didn’t have anyone to hug them to sleep, one compensated. She had a platoon of pillows—one long, one short, one hard, one soft, one medium, one feather, one polyester—piled up on top of a single bed. More often than not, she found them scattered all over the floor come morning and felt a chill. The blanket was a work of art: soft, heavy down clothed in the smoothest bare-thread cotton that had seen the insides of a washing machine too many times. Much loved, much used. Engulfed in the sea of comfort while listening to the songs, she found slumber and survived her early twenties during which her frequent last thought every night was to pull the trigger of a small-caliber revolver pointed straight to the temple.

It was easy to be defeated, but fortunately she had been too much of a coward to ever hurt herself physically. She couldn’t see the point of cutting herself—being dead inside but wanting to feel alive presented a logical dilemma: one needs to be alive to want, so how could she be dead? Over the counter drugs weren’t her thing, popping them up like candies was irresponsible and she calculated it would take some serious cash to get kidney stones by overdosing on Panadol. She might as well invest the money and do retail therapy with the profit. Gorging on food wasn’t idyllic, neither was abstaining from it. Only idiots tried that, she reasoned. She might’ve been miserable, but her appetite didn’t know that and so it continued to prosper. In the end, she concluded she had not been a very good depressed person. It just wasn’t enough for an intervention.

One of her problems was being half-assed after all.

Or perhaps the songs saved her, in a way.

Other songs came and went, but these twelve remained. She had tried branching out to other artists, more mainstream ones, and had not found the same peace. The indie ones gave her headache—most didn’t really know what they wanted to be and simply labelled themselves indie for the edge. Folk songs were all right for a while, jazz was confusing, blues too demanding, and she disliked classical music with vigor.

On the inside cover of the CD, there were four signatures in black. Back then she had borrowed the marker from a stranger while waiting in line for the autographs, standing star-struck in her best gothic lolita getup. It had been an ensemble of a voluminous black frock, ivory frill-shirt, striped stockings, and a pair of seven-inch black pumps that made her want to scream murder. Her face was painted white, mascara’ed till her eyes grew as big as kumquats, and experimented with black-sesame based lipstick that made her lick it off in no time.  

The CD cost 20 bucks, by no means a small figure for someone who worked three part-time jobs just to have a roof over her head and meals three times a day. But it was love at first sight. At first sound, to be exact.

When she got to the front of the line, she remembered that her hands had trembled a little. The band members’ faces were distracted but kind, and the female vocalist moved to take the CD from her for the signing. For the briefest moment, their fingers touched and suddenly a dam broke loose. She couldn’t stop the words. Her voice sounded foreign even to her own ears, but much less than the stream of words escaping her mouth. There was a declaration of passion, a snippet on how her plan to be as cool as a cucumber went down the drain, and finally how she knew that someday their songs would save a life. Back then she had known that this meeting had been vital, although she couldn’t put a finger as to why. Before she knew it, the last stroke was inked and they handed the CD back to her. She had murmured thank you’s, possibly in three languages, while making small bows during exit, couldn’t believing her luck.

She had not turned back since then. The songs dragged her forward, always pushing her through the stillbirth of dawn—when the claws were usually the sharpest and memories most unforgiving—into blinding sunlight and another chance at fighting. It went on for years. It wasn’t a CD that she would play during happy days. She played it to remind her that happy days were just ahead and staying alive would bring good things, eventually.

Look, the second track sang, once again, look at this snow. Shall we dance? Always and always?

Perhaps, one day, when she had regained that will to dance, she would find the band again and thanked them in their native language.

Someday.